Crisis Intervention, By Sketch
by MysteryGal5
Summary: "I just like coming here to sketch people in crisis." / After the Decimation, everyone has a portrait in MJ's sketchbook. It's her coping mechanism. Meanwhile, Steve thought he was moving on after the crisis, unaware of his true feelings until he sees a sketch a young girl in his counselling session drew. (AU / OS / Post-Infinity War)


**This is another one of my ****_Endgame_**** cathartic stories before actually seeing the movie. The moment I came up with it, I was so motivated to write it so I did. And since ****_Far From Home_**** comes out today, what a perfect time to publish it!**

**This is an AU based on the premise that MJ actually survived the snap even though she probably didn't make it. Just roll with it because I like what I did with it.**

**As always, I do not own the characters.**

**Enjoy :)**

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Crisis Intervention, By Sketch:

She should've just gone to a graveyard because she felt like dying.

MJ doesn't exactly remember what she was doing the moment it happened. She just has flashes of people starting to disappear before her eyes into thin air. All the screaming caused her to tear out her headphones and reenter the unbelievable reality that nobody could explain. The city went into chaos in the snap of a finger and, in the blink of an eye, a dark shadow loomed over them. Many believed the foggy air is caused by the scattering ashes of their loved ones.

When people are young, everything feels like either the end of the world or the beginning. MJ thought that she was going to disappear like everyone else including the people she cared about, but she didn't. Even after everything seemed to have _calmed down_, she was on edge about dissipating at any given second.

She always wondered why she remained but could never come up with a reason. Even if the odds were _by chance_, there had to be some sort of logic.

MJ always kept her sketchbook and a pencil in her embrace as she roamed the streets with her headphones in her ears. She never had music playing but wore them to create the illusion of letting the world fade around her. There was no melody or set of lyrics that could describe what she's afraid to admit aloud.

She always had this sadistic fascination for sketching people in crisis. Back then, it was just something for her to do in after-school detention despite never being punished herself. It amazed her to outline her miserable classmates, hunched over in their desks or annoyed to the point of tearing out their hair when watching that Captain America video cassette.

Back then, it was hard to find sketch subjects.

Now, everyone she would see had a picture.

Constantly practicing is how you learn and improve as an artist. And for MJ, it also helped her cope.

MJ never recognized faces anymore as she walked through the city. Aside from them being strangers before the disaster, the ones remained all blurred together in their expressions of deep sadness, grief, despair, confusion, anything and everything related. Many of her sketches were detailed in the outlines of the person but their faces were just tornadoes of pencil shadings.

It didn't matter what they looked like because everyone looked the same at this point.

Again, she should've gone to the graveyard: not only because she felt like dying but because it would be full of survivors hunched over their loved ones' tombstones that they made after the decimation, wondering why they weren't taken to be with the deceased. _Those people reeked of a crisis. _What doesn't kill you gives you a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a really dark sense of humour, doesn't it?

-o-

Presently, MJ sits behind the steering wheel of a car. She's been sitting in her car for a half-hour because if she steps out, then she'll have to be in the unfortunate real world again. Even though people have been moving on from the decimation, there were some stragglers. She had some empty pages left in her sketchbook that she had to fill with drawings of those who were left.

She heard some people talking about a group counselling session happening in the basement of an old and abandoned church. MJ only showed interest because she was drawn to the idea of sketching a group of people in peril. It made them look like a team. Maybe the additional number of subjects on one canvas would increase her chances of moving on as well.

After taking a breath, she grabs her sketchbook and pencils from the passenger's seat before stepping out of the car. She pops in her headphones and starts heading to her destination. However, she's a bit delayed by someone walking slowly in front of her.

Before the decimation, MJ never understood why people intentionally walk slowly. Don't they have things to do? The faster people move, the faster they could get things done. If things get done faster, then they'll have more time for other things. She guesses that now that people had nothing to do, she understands why they would drag their feet with every step.

Eventually, she makes it to the church. She opens the door and wonders how the church maintained its typical scent after all this time. Discarding that thought, she finds the closest staircase and starts making her way down, opening the door to a room set with plastic chairs placed in a circle. Most of the people there were older than she was so she removed her headphones before taking a seat as far back as she could.

She sits crossed-legging on her chair despite how uncomfortable it was for her body. It acts as a somewhat sturdy table for her to sketch. She looks at all the people surrounding her, expressing their grief and worry. She just zoned out, is aware that she zoned out, but isn't motivated enough to zone back in. The tip of her pencil sits on her paper because it only hits her now that everyone in her sketchbook looked exactly the same.

Then, her eyes land on the man who she learned was in charge of the sessions. Despite looking accepting of what everyone had to say, MJ notices that he had a different attitude towards the decimation as a whole.

Intrigued, she flips to a new page in her sketchbook even though she didn't touch the page she was on prior. This man, this leader, had a whole different internal crisis that she hasn't seen before.

Alternating her eyes between him and her paper, she starts off with his blonde hair that was slicked back like from the 40s. Somebody wanted to go back to the good old days and she couldn't blame him. But he looked way too young to have been alive during those times. This world was not as he imagined but he never said that aloud. He just listened to other people vent. Isn't it strange how people talk the least about the things they think about the most?

Then, she works her way down to his face. Did she know him? No, she couldn't have.

His features are sharp as he listened to everyone's words. She could poke it in real life with the end of her pencil and it wouldn't budge.

When she looks in his eyes, as much of a cliché as it sounds, they had a story that surpassed these plastic chairs and stained glass windows. Nobody in this room could understand what he went through before it all happened, not even her. Her pencil strokes couldn't capture that dimension.

Maybe that's why he didn't say anything but advice. He wanted to help others but himself. Maybe he couldn't help himself.

He didn't look sad by what happened. He was beyond angry.

She has seen anger before and had some pages showing it, but this was a whole new level.

_Enraged_, if that was a strong enough word. She tries her best to shade in those _enraged_ contours on his face.

She can tell how dangerous he is by the way he holds his anger inside his body quietly. It bubbles inside of him, being restrained by strong crossed arms across his chest. It's not the violent rage she's seen before, but a righteous, burning fury that such an abominable thing like this ever happened. He has the right to be unnecessarily angry. He has the right to curse, scream, and throw things just to watch them break. If he's angry with himself, then that's sometimes great because that's how you get shit done.

_But he's just sitting there, listening._

Her pencil breaks as her lines got sharper, but she simply pulls out a new one from her pocket.

-o-

After the session, Steve catches up with the young teenager who sat across from him. She was the youngest one in the room and silent the entire time, alternating her view from her sketchbook to the room or, specifically, to him. Her focus was so strong on him that he knew that she was drawing him.

He approaches her just in time before she could run out. Steve manages to get a glimpse of the cover of her sketchbook and sees the initials MJ on the cover, unsure if that's her nickname or acronym of her full name.

"You alright, kid?" Steve asks her.

He's unsure if that's the best way to start the conversation. If she showed up here, that meant that she was not okay, right?

MJ looks up at him and removes her headphones. "…oh, you were talking to me?"

"You were the only kid in here," he responds.

MJ bites down on her lips, hugging her sketchbook across her chest tightly and nodding. "Yeah, the other remaining gen Z folk are just screwing around or screwing each other. I kind of like to keep to myself."

"By sketching," he concludes, pointing to the book in her arms.

MJ continues to nod. "I just like sketching people in crisis. Despite the dramatic decrease in the population, there are endless muses but they all looked the same after a while. I don't think anyone could ever move on from this. Don't you just get tired?"

Steve looks away from her for a moment, taking a breath before facing her again. "My tolerance is getting better."

"So are my drawings."

"Can I see what you drew?"

MJ is hesitant on handing over her sketchbook and Steve can't blame her. He was asking to look inside of her wounds, her vulnerability, her perspective on the world post-snap, the world he caused by letting Thanos win. _And she is so young too, who knows how many friends and loved ones she lost_. _Who knows how long she's been on her own._

Eventually, she holds it out for him and he gently accepts it. Steve starts flipping through and sees sketches of people in situations he's seen in real life. The more drawings he leafs through, the more he understands what she meant by everyone looking the same and never truly being able to move on. Instant deaths used to happen on the daily but never half the population in one go _and he could have done something more to stop it_.

And then, he lands on her last sketch which had to have been the one she just completed. It's him and he knows it.

Steve is taken aback by how he looks, not believing that he looked like that this whole time but he knows it's true. Parts of it, like his frown and jaw, twitch showing dissatisfaction were probably exaggerated in her pencil strokes but only to amplify how he was really feeling on the inside.

He's felt that way since they lost and it's only gotten worse every day after that. He could never move on, no matter how many times he repeats that to the people he listens to vent about their losses. _Did that make him a hypocrite?_

MJ said she liked to sketch people in crisis and she definitely captured his. Her drawings prove to be more emotion than skill.

"Did I really look like that?" Steve asks her, closing her book and handing it back to her.

"Yeah," MJ responds. "If this was a cartoon, you'd have smoke coming out of your ears."

Steve is unsure how to respond to that at first. "I should really change that face."

"I think your face and feelings are perfect except for where you're expressing them."

Steve nods, taking in her words as a young woman and an artist. Art isn't a mirror, it's a foundation of what the muse should look like. He could never pretend to be okay because he's not. He has to do something.

He has somewhere else to be enraged because that's how he will get things done.

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**The duo we never knew we needed. As I was typing the introduction, it hit me that both Steve and MJ can draw. What a beautiful coincidence.**

**Anyways, thank you to anyone who read this. Please let me know what you thought. If you have any story ideas that you would like for me to write, do not be scared to suggest it!**

**~ MysteryGal5**


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